


you gather back

by parrishes



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Established Relationship, F/M, First Meetings, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 08:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7632643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parrishes/pseuds/parrishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan and Vanessa in seven lifetimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you gather back

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr! I thought I would post it here before I went on vacation.

_Beautiful one_ , they call her. _Mistress._   _Beautiful stranger._

No one knows where she came from. She simply appeared one day, walking into the city with her bare feet and her white dress. The crowd had hushed as she walked by, dignified and calm, staring straight ahead. 

They say the desert itself created her. They say the gods had made her, and sent her to earth as a gift for the pharaoh. He had tried to claim her for himself, but she refused, and chose to enter the god’s temple instead. She has not left it since. 

He is a mercenary from a land to the south. His people have been in the service of the royal family for as long as he can remember. He had chosen to leave them early in favor of beginning his duties at the city, chosen to leave his stern father and the memory of his dead siblings. He has always been good at outrunning his ghosts, especially the ones created by his carnage.

When he arrives, he quickly rises high enough to be assigned as a temple guard. In this way, he observes her. She is not a priest, but she is akin to one. Never before has a woman held so much power in the temple. The court whispers about her behind the columns, watches her out of the corners of their eyes. She is under constant guard, should someone try to harm her.

He gently watches her perform her duties, day after day and night after night. The acolytes all call her _mistress_ , but her true name, if she has one, is a secret. She looks at him too, with her knowing eyes, a half-smile lighting up her mouth as she pours libations or lights incense. His name is known to her. 

This is their routine for a long time. Until, one night, it changes: she emerges from the sacred space to grab his hand and lead him inside. As she lays him down in the sanctuary and climbs onto his thighs, he learns that she does, indeed, have a name. 

* * *

He is still a soldier. The sun beats down on him, and the sky looks more blue than he has ever seen it.  _It is too blue_ , he thinks, and somewhere deep inside him there is a twist of fear. 

The crowd is screaming in his ears. Despite the heat he is glad of his helmet, as spit and rocks fly through the air. One small stone hits his head and he winces, although he is not hurt. He is not angry, either. The rock was not meant for him. 

The hill rises in the distance - the skull stares down at him, and he feels… small, ashamed. He does not want to attend the execution, but his orders are his orders, and he is nothing if not dutiful. 

The man, some short stretch ahead of him on the path, staggers under the weight of his load; the criminal falls into the dust, and he hears his fellow soldiers shouting curses, mocking away, before ordering him to get back up and continue walking. 

The man is bleeding. His scourged back gleams in the daylight like rubies, and the sight of it - sticky and thick - makes him want to howl. The crowd jeers and shrieks as he walks by and he sees an observer land a pebble near the thorns. A crowd of mourners accompanies the whipped man, following him across the _via dolorosa_  to the hill. He knows the charges, what the man had preached, and if this is the result… He had preached mercy. There is no mercy here. 

As the condemned is brutally stripped and the clothes are parceled out, he watches the crowd, who is watching the spectacle. There are several women prostrate and wailing, others still laugh and point and yell for his death. The crowd grows louder as the man is nailed to the wood, and their screams reach a climax as it is hoisted upright. 

In the crowd he sees a woman, surrounding by those who are cheering. She is weeping silently, tears slipping down her face. Her eyes are as blue as the sky, and he suddenly realizes that _she_  is what he is afraid of. She meets his gaze, then begins to push her way out of the throng to leave. 

He does the only thing he can do: he abandons his post and runs after her. 

He catches up to her when she is alone in the city. “I am sorry,” he says in Latin, because he _is._  The man did not deserve the death he received. She looks at him with her blue eyes and asks, “What do you believe?”

“I believe in the gods of Rome.” 

She smiles. “Then you will see,” she says, before turning away. He follows. 

* * *

The city is in chaos, and the ones who chose to stay behind during the siege weep bitter tears. There is blood in the streets. 

The walls have been breached. The city is taken. 

He runs past a contingent of men back to the house. He does not care if they consider him a coward; he can hear them shouting, _be a man stand and fight with us_ , but he has to protect her. He _has_ to. 

It is the wrong time - the moon does not favor him now. If it did, maybe he _could_  fight, but they have tried hard to keep this secret. They have worked too hard to reveal him now. 

He ignores the soldiers, and continues running. There are no corpses where they live, but it is only a matter of time. Multiple reports say the Turks are inside the city walls. 

He thinks of her, a few nights ago. They had taken their children down to the docks, begging the captain of the last ship bound for Italy to take them on board. Their son had woken as he had carried him up the plank and lain him in the bunk. Blearily, he had asked his mother what was happening. 

_You are going on an adventure with your sister,_  she had said. _Just the two of you. Are you excited?_

_Yes… But I want you to come too. And father._ The child is still half asleep. He does not understand. 

_No, my son. We are too old. This is an adventure for children only._

Their son considers it for a moment. _When will we see you again?_  

_At the end of your journey_. She leans forward and kisses their boy on the forehead, then their little daughter, who is deeply asleep. _I love you both. Now go to sleep_. Rocked by the swaying of the boat, the boy had fallen back asleep quickly, and he looked so _young_. Too young to see what could be coming. 

They had watched the ship slip out of the harbor, sneaking away into the night. She had said nothing, but the tears on her face spoke enough. 

Now, the screams begin to ring in their quarter. He busts through the door, and she is nowhere in sight. He sweeps the house until he finds her, kneeling in the chapel. Her face is calm.

“We have to go,” he tells her. “Now. The way to the docks might still be clear.”

“No,” she says. 

“There might still be time-” 

“No,” she repeats. “There is no time. It is too late now. But we have no reason to fear. Have faith.” Her face is so earnest that he truly believes her. So he positions himself next to her, and they pray in silence until they hear footsteps overhead. They ignore the noise until the chapel door bursts open, and when the soldiers come, they are not afraid. 

* * *

The townspeople are glaring, but he cannot see it. The rope is tight around his wrists, the blindfold tight around his head, and he stumbles a little as the executioner forces him to kneel upright in the straw.

He remembers the cottage in the woods, the moss that grew on it, the stream that flowed nearby. He remembers the wild rosebushes that were only a short walk into the forest. 

He remembers that the commoners came with torches. He remembers the priest calling out, promising to be understanding if they submitted willingly. He remembers her face in the firelight, deciding, pondering whether or not to leave their home. It is only when they threatened to toss the torches on the roof that she made the decision to leave.

Her minute optimism was a wasted effort. As soon as they were in reach of the villagers they were wrenched apart, a multitude of hands flying, pushed and shoved towards the town, accompanied by angry shouts. 

They say she is a witch, a demon. They say the same of him. They say he turns into a large black wolf, that he has been stalking and killing their children in the night. They are correct on the first charge, but not the second.

They say his union with her is unholy, satanic. He does not bother to tell them that she believes in their God, for all the good it will not do. In the brief moment they had before their separation, he told her to admit to everything and that he would do the same. A futile attempt, maybe, but if he could spare her any sort of torture, then the slight to their combined honor might have been worth it. 

It was the pleading look on his face that made her agree. She had stiffened at his voice, and he knew she would willingly undergo as much torture - the rack, the thumbscrews, the burns - as she could possibly take. She would never break under their weak, brittle fingers. He knows that she would rather die than admit to anything - but if she does not admit, she _will_  die. A confession is their one small chance at mercy. 

It is a small chance. Impossibly small. There is no mercy in this superstitious town. All the things that she has done for them - tinctures, mixtures, medicines, midwifery - are evidence of her guilt. He loves her, and that fact might be worse than her wrongdoings - he is so morally corrupt that he has sunk to love a witch. He is an evil man. 

_We should have burned at home_. 

He is kneeling in the straw, hands tied behind his back. The executioner tends to his blade, and he does not understand the delay - until they rip the blindfold off, and he _sees_ her.

They have shaved her head, that is the first thing he notices. The white prisoner’s dress is covered in filth. Her arms and face are bruised, and he can feel the growl echoing in his chest. 

He could escape. He could break free. He could kill them all. But then where would they be? Where would they go? 

Would she forgive him for it? 

Her hands are bound in front of her. A clergyman yanks her up the stone path, and he sees the stake. Instantly he panics, until she catches his eye. She gives a slow shake of her head, so slow that only he would know she is telling him _no, no, do not do it. They do not deserve your hate._

They push her onto the logs, kindling and brush scratching her legs. They free her only to tie her hands behind the pole. When the priest attending her raises his torch and begins to recite the Last Rites, the priest standing before the block does the same. The little man looks terrified of her, but she does not appear angry, merely blank. Maybe amused, to be honest. He is sure that he must resemble the child-murdering wolf they say he is. 

And then the prayers are over. The torch is tossed onto the logs without ceremony and the sword is unsheathed. The tinder ignites, and the smoke stings his eyes and nose. As she burns in front of him, the blade swings at his neck, and the last thing he knows in life is the sound of her singing on the pyre. 

* * *

He is a businessman’s son. His father is a heavy-handed man, and he has never been good enough for him.

His brother was an example. Paul was the _standard_. But if his father had wanted all his sons to be Paul, then he should have _stopped_ with Paul. If you win the lottery once, why continue to play? He is what you get if you continue to tempt fate.

He led his family to the slaughter. He is a wretched man.

She finds him in a bar. He has honed his shooting among the Apache, and even among their ranks he is talented. He is sipping at his whiskey, continuing to crystallize in his bitterness, when she sits down at his table. 

He thinks she is another pretty face, that he’d like to see what urges hide underneath her layers of icy formality. When she offers to pay him for his skills, he forces her bluff. She folds, and he accepts. 

He can smell lies, but the scent of her honesty is refreshing. He has almost forgotten that such a thing as honesty exists.

Her surrender is graceful, subtle enough that he almost misses it. Her smile is the only thing he ever asks her for. It’s not until later, much later, when his bullet ricochets into her abdomen, that he realizes how much he misses the sight of her happiness. 

* * *

He has to be dead. He _has_  to be. There is no possible way that he is alive. 

Nobody could be in this much pain and live. 

“You are hurt,” says a voice. “Do not move.” Hands rove over his face, and then he moving. He would scream from the pain, but his voice is silent. He is briefly aware that he is being lifted, and then there is nothing.

-

It has been months since the battle. Allied forces found him on the banks of the river, the only surviving member of his company. All of his comrades are dead.

(He tries to forget shooting at the Germans, tries to forget slamming the butt of his M1-Garand rifle into the heads of Waffen-SS soldiers with more force than necessary, trying to free himself from the mud and their grasping hands around his ankles. _You have the fury of a wolf_ , said one of the Dutch soldiers he had met. _I have never seen anyone fight like you._ Oh, if only he knew the truth.) 

The Ardennes. Bastogne. The Meuse. Antwerp. He doesn’t know how he got from one place to the next, but here he is now, recovering at yet another hospital. His arms are riddled with rubbery red scars from the fire. His vision is gone in one eye. There are shards in his limbs, various pieces of fragmented artillery. When he can walk, he does so with a limp. 

He has lost much weight, as much from the injuries and the bleeding as from his complete lack of appetite. He is bored, sitting in the hospital all day, playing chess and writing letters home that he will never send, because there is nobody to receive them. His fingers twitch, wishing to claw at something or someone, anything. 

(He can control it now. It took most of his life, but years of rigorous self-discipline have made it barely possible. He hasn’t killed anyone yet, at least not anyone who doesn’t deserve it, and that’s about as much as he can hope for.)

He fights the urge down. The days pass by, dreary and blank. Until one morning, when the nurse helps him down the stairs for his daily walk, he sees her. 

She is on makeshift crutches, her lower leg held off the ground awkwardly. One of her arms is heavily and clumsily bandaged, and her eyes are puffy and bruised. Her lip is split. There is dried blood on her face and clothes, and her hunched, stiff posture might be the result of a few broken ribs.

His nurse gasps as the woman gingerly approaches the hospital. She asks him in broken English if he would not mind a delay, because the lady is dire need of assistance; he tells her that it is _completely fine_  with him if he sits and rests. The nurse nods and rushes forward, assisting the stranger onto the hospital steps. She tries to hop up with her good foot, but stumbles down next to him, and the nurse runs inside to grab more hands and a stretcher. 

“This is not how I imagined spending my Friday,” she grumbles. Her cut-glass British accent sounds like a bell, after day upon of day of guttural Dutch. “I need to find a radio. I have to report back, give my status.”

“The radio is broken,” he tells her. “They haven’t fixed it yet.”

“Fuck! … Fuck!”

He laughs. He can’t help it. He laughs long and hard, and she glares at him. “I am going to be court-martialed and you’re laughing?” 

“You can barely walk,” he says. “You can’t work if you’re dead.”

“I am a _courier_ ,” she hisses, then gasps. “Fuck, my ribs. Forget what I just said. I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“If you’re a _courier_ , you definitely can’t work like that. Explain to your supervising officer what happened and beg for mercy if you have to.” He’s purposefully being flippant to see how she’ll react. 

“He’s dead,” she snaps. “My commanding officer is dead and our headquarters are destroyed. I need to radio back and I need to do it _now_.” 

That renders him silent, at least for the moment. “Maybe the army offices have a radio you could use. They’re down by the port, near the waterfront. Ask them when you can walk without trouble.” 

She gives him a narrow sideways glance, but says, “Thank you,” anyway. 

Glancing at her face - still extraordinarily pretty, swelling and all - he dials his Cowboy Charm up to eleven, accent and all, and asks her, “So… you’re from England?”

* * *

She’s asleep on the couch. 

The rain on falls on the windows and the dim light reflects off the plants outside, so the interior of their townhouse looks faintly green. Everything is soft grey and soft green, and he finds the silence soothing. 

She’s still dressed: her shoes, socks, and peacoat are still on her. She is vulnerable in sleep, unguarded, and he usually takes these rare opportunities to watch her for a bit. But the whistle of the tea kettle breaks the silence, and he rushes back into the kitchen to find a jet of steam erupting from the red spout. 

He hurriedly twists the burner off. Next to the stove is her favorite mug, a teabag already inside. He pours the hot water, jerks and dips the teabag around a few times, and then puts it in the microwave to steep. It’ll be ready to heat when she wakes up. 

He leaves the kitchen and heads back into the living room. The kettle may have woken her briefly - she’s rolled onto her side - but she’s still asleep. He gives her a sigh and a chuckle before untying her boots and slipping them off her feet. He rolls her onto her back again, unbuttons her coat, and lifts her shoulders to pull it off her arms. 

She wakes while he’s hanging her coat up in the closet. When he comes back, she’s pulled the soft throw blanket over her body, curled up on her side like a cat, watching him with her dark eyes.

“You fell asleep with the stove on again,” he says. 

Her smile is apologetic and sheepish. “I’m sorry. I sat down to wait and the next thing I knew… I set an alarm on my phone, if that means anything. It was supposed to wake me up.” 

“If you set one, it didn’t ring. But your phone is old, so I’m not surprised. You should get a new one.” 

“A new phone?”

“A new _job_ ,” he says, lifting her legs to slide under them, propping her feet on the sofa’s arm. “You can’t keep working like this. It’s killing you.” 

“They need me,” she tells him. “I can’t just _quit,_ though I often think I’d like to.”

“I know, I know,” he sighs. “But… ask them to hire another doctor. Someone to help take the load off. You can’t do it all by yourself, and… I need you too. You know that, right?”

“I know,” she whispers, and they sit in silence, listening to the wind blow across the chimney’s open flue. 

“This is a rainy city,” he comments idly, nearly asleep himself. All the lamps are off and the only light is the smoky one filtering in through the windows.

“We don’t have to stay here, you know. We can leave. I can quit the hospital; we can move to the States. Maybe back to your hometown, if you’d like. You said it was sunny.” 

“If we ever move to America it sure as hell won’t be to that dump. But this city is _your_ home. Would you really want to leave?”

“Maybe it’s time for a change,” she says. “Maybe it’s time to start somewhere new. And I wouldn’t have my job, so if you want incentive… there’s that.”

“Where would you want to go?”

“Somewhere warm,” she says dryly. “The south, maybe. New Orleans looks like it would be entertaining.” 

“The Big Easy? You’ve got that right.” He’s laughing. Las Vegas might be more famously known as Sin City, but New Orleans could give it a run for its money. “I will say that New Orleans is… It’s a tough town.”

“Tough?” 

“Well, not all of it. The garden district is nice. But I don’t really think it’s the kind of place where you’d want to raise a family or leave your front door unlocked.”

“What idiot would leave their front door unlocked?” 

 “Not the point, but… New Orleans is a lot to handle. High crime, not the best place for kids. If you want the south, Savannah might be better. Maybe Wilmington. Do you want to stay on the east coast?”

“I…” she sputters, and he realizes just how _overwhelmed_ she is. 

“Think it over,” he tells her, kisses her on the forehead before he makes for the cellar. “Time for me to batten down the hatches. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She gives him a sleepy nod of assent and watches him head to the basement, closing her eyes as he closes the door. 

It’s almost moonrise, and he already knows that tomorrow morning will come early. He checks the locks, shuts the doors and windows, closes the shutters. He tests the chains before fastening them around his wrists.

Sitting against the wall, staring at the brick arch, he waits for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Creative licensing applies to some of these vignettes! Credit for the title goes to Sappho.


End file.
